Nine Jimmy Rimmers – Arsenal and Football

What with the takeover and the tragic loss of Danny Fiszman, last weekend’s game seems a while ago now.  But it mattered a lot because we finally found our way to three points again.  Would’ve mattered a whole lot more if we’d done that the week before of course, but there we are.

This week we need to do it again against Liverpool who go about their business rather better than Blackpool.  They’re not at full strength: Gerrard, Agger and Johnson will all be missing, but with Carroll, Suarez and the industrious Dirk Kuyt they are definitely dangerous.

The injury news for Arsenal is quite good. Szczesny and Djourou may return and Song is definitely back.  Almunia’s knee or whatever still keeps him out so if Szczesny doesn’t make it then mad Uncle Jens will play again.

If it Lehman then I hope that Szczesny keeps his eyes and ears fixed on him to pick up how he takes charge.  Anyone in the wrong place, anyone who fails to pick up a runner, Jens makes sure they know about it.  But he also hands out praise as well.

Hopefully Djourou will make it, because asking Squillaci whether he wants to take Carroll or Suarez doesn’t sound like a question with a correct answer.  If it ends up having to be asked then it will have to be Carroll because Koscielny will need to take on the movement of Suarez.

The ninety minute threat of Dirk Kuyt, generally on the right, means that Clichy is going to need consistent help.  Which isn’t what you generally expect from Arshavin.  So, Nasri on the left?  Or even Gibbs, or is that too negative?

With Nasri, Arshavin, Walcott and Van Persie all available we’re probably not going to see Bendtner or Chamakh start.

There has been talk that both might leave the club this summer.  This is a tricky issue for Arsenal.  Playing the formation we do now, only one out and out striker will start.  But given the vulnerability of Van Persie to injury we need a good striker ready to step in.

Perhaps it has to be an older player like Berbatov at Man Utd?  Someone who isn’t worried that their future is being jeopardised by lack of time on the pitch.

Anyway, back to the Liverpool game.  Late fitness tests allowing I expect to see:

________ Szczesny ________
Eboue Djourou Koscielny Clichy
_______Song _ Wilshere ___
_________ Fabregas ______
Walcott _ Van Persie _ Nasri

What do you think?

This was not a fluent performance but we desperately needed a win and the the team hung in there and won it.  With a bit of good fortune along the way.

Blackpool came out with confidence and determination.  You can imagine Ian Holloway had told them to try and break Arsenal’s fragile morale with an early goal.  It didn’t get that bad but for ages it seemed like we wouldn’t ever get out of our own half.

Clichy wasn’t having his best of games, and we all know that Eboue gets out of position, so Blackpool were getting in behind us a lot.  In the last couple of games Arshavin has shown that he can track back and defend but he was back to his usual self yesterday and giving Clichy no support at all.

No-one would have been surprised if Blackpool’s onslaught had got them a goal. But Arsenal hung on and gradually got some control over the game.

Jens Lehman’s two reserve performances hadn’t inspired confidence but he was pretty solid and it was good to see an Arsenal keeper taking charge of the defense.  Right from the start he was demanding more.  He had a couple of nervous moments but pulled off a couple of crucial saves too.

When Arsenal made the breakthrough it was with two good goals.  The first showed the good side of Diaby.  He started the move in our half and when Van Persie put the ball in the six-yard box it was Diaby who had made the run to be on the end of the pass for a tap-in.  Not enough Arsenal players make lung-bursting runs into to box and if Diaby played like that on a regular basis he would start on a regular basis.

Later though he showed his daft side too, getting a completely pointless yellow for kicking the ball away.  Referee Lee Mason was shaking his head in disbelief as he put the card back in his pocket and he wasn’t the only one.  In some ways Diaby typifies the frustrating nature of the current squad. You can see what he has that could make him a great asset, but not consistently enough and some really dumb stuff too.

Another player showing flashes of his good side yesterday was Eboue.  He took the second goal really well with a one-two with Wilshere and then a powerful shot with his weaker foot.

Just before the break, Blackpool nearly got back in it as Arsenal got mixed up on the box.  Fortunately Lehman’s trailing leg and a covering move from Fabregas got the ball away – a few inches from disaster.

But two-nil up at half-time wasn’t enough.  Blackpool came out with the same belief they’d had at the start and this time their pressure got them a goal.  It could have come via a Lehman foul, a red card and a penalty, but referee Mason played advantage and Blackpool scored.  And we were saved finding out who Arsenal’s sixth choice goal keeper is!

Good job too, as later Clichy dawdled on the ball and was dispossessed just outside the box.  Lehman was up to the challenge and made a crucial save.  An outfield player deputising in goal wouldn’t have stood a chance and he kept out goal advantage.

Blackpool had another good shout for a penalty.  Koscielny brought one their players down in the box and we were lucky to escape a spot kick.  I don’t know whether Mason missed it, or decided that the ball had already gone, but it was a foul in the box and we had a lucky escape.

Sometimes this season it’s been hard to understand the logic of Wenger’s substitutions, but he was spot on yesterday when he brought on Walcott for Arshavin.  Quite apart from the fact that Arshavin was anonymous all the time he was on the pitch, there was an opportunity that Walcott was just the player to exploit.

Blackpool are playing for their Premiership survival so they has to keep attacking, leaving plenty of space to run into.  Walcott kept doing just that and after Eboue and Fabregas combined to set him free down the right, Theo ran the ball down the wing and fed it right into Van Persie’s path.  Goal number three and, finally, game over.

Fabregas and Van Persie deserve more of a mention.  They both played well.  The only worry is that they created a lot of chances thy weren’t converted.  We have tougher teams left to play than Blackpool and we need a higher rate of return on our chances.

Buy for all the caginess, it was a win and we really needed it.  It will boost confidence in the team which is vital for the bigger games ahead.

Fabregas and leads our Man of the Match poll from Lehaman.  You can add your vote here.

For a change, the injury news is relatively good.  Fabregas, Walcott, Diaby and Song all fit and ready to go.  Van Persie, Bendtner and Ramsey waiting on fitness tests today.  Of course we’re still missing Djourou and three goalkeepers but by this season’s standards we’re in reasonable shape.

The biggest miss is Djourou, but at least we will have Alex Song back on guard in front of the defence.  He has been the essential part of the good performances Arsenal have had this season.  Defensive midfielders don’t get a lot of kudos, and maybe that’s why he ventured a lot further up the pitch early on in the season, but his ability to win the ball and turn the team from defence to attack is fantastic.  Denilson doesn’t have the same skill, Diaby doesn’t have the same discipline.  Song is the man.

Anyway, back to the team.  Despite his rusty reserve game there are still some out there agitating for Lehman.  I don’t think so.  Manuel Almunia will surely play in goal and I hope every fan will wish him well.  He isn’t the keeper we really need and he will get caught out of position, but the is completely committed and will pull off some agile reaction saves too.

One or two mentions for Miquel out there, but I think that Squillaci will start alongside Clichy, Koscielny and Sagna.

Only question in midfield is whether or not Jack Wilshere needs a breather, which would Diaby in alongside Song.  I think it’s a real possibility.  Wilshere played big chunks of both internationals.  I know he’s busy telling the whole world he should play every game going, but he there’s a chance he’ll be on the bench tomorrow.

The key decision up-front depends on the fitness test for Van Persie today.  I hope that RVP is fit to play.  We need goals to get this run of nine final games started and he’s the man most likely to score.  Otherwise Chamakh.

Nasri has to play, which leaves us with a question that’s been there everytime they’re both fit: Walcott or Arshavin?  For me, Walcott.  When Theo is fit he is a more consistent threat.  Even when he doesn’t have the ball, the threat of his pace influences the enthusiasm of his opponents to commit forward.

So I hope we will see:

___________ Almunia ____________
Sagna _ Squillaci _ Koscielny _ Clichy
__________Song _ Wilshere _______
___________ Fabregas ___________
Walcott ____ Van Persie _____ Nasri

Our league form coming in to this is OK, unbeaten in the last six verses Blackburn’s four losses and two draws.  But of the real story is the disappointment of Wembly, Old Trafford, the Nou Camp, and having to fight back from two-down at West Brom.

We have one shot at the silverware left.  Nine games.  At home to Blackburn is as good an opportunity as any to pick ourselves up.  So I hope the team will come out all guns blazing with the image of David Rocastle’s clenched-fisted determination in their heads.

(see 2.10 into the video below)

C’mon Arsenal!

Sometimes we say, “you couldn’t make it up could you?” But mostly we say, “Van Persie scores twice in a week and then gets injured.”

To add to that deja vu sensation we have an “Arsenal keeper cocks up” story too.

I’m not going to stress on the state of Robin Van Persie’s knee yet. We’ve no doubt got a few days of conflicting reports on that one.

The return of big Jens got a lot of coverage for a reserve game and the hacks were not disappointed. Whilst the in-house Arsenal clubs news team thought it was a magnificent display with a touch of rustiness, everyone else called it a nervous performance with some real howlers.

The truth is probably a mixture of the two and nobody sold any tabloid newspapers with a balanced sense of perspective. This was his first full game after coming out of retirement and losing a central defender to a red card early on won’t have helped either.

No-one should be too surprised that he needs some match practice and those who talked about him walking straight into the first team instead of Almunia were always clutching at straws.

Jens Lehman was a sensible choice for cover, late in the season, when the alternative would have been some nobody who was making the training ground look untidy somewhere else.

Still, at least Almunia knows where he’s going to be on Saturday afternoon!

The Arsenal injury list is pretty lengthy so a lot of Arsene Wenger’s decisions are straightforward.  Some of those decisions are made for the rest of the season too, with confirmation this week that we won’t see Vermaelen and are unlikely to see Djourou either, despite the optimism of the Swiss FA during the week.

With three goalkeepers unavailable, Almunia is down to start every game, with big Uncle Jens on the bench to keep him focussed, or a bag of nerves depending how the German’s presence works out in practice.

Squillaci and Koscielny will have to to gel in a way they haven’t so far, with only the youthful Ignasi Miquel to keep them honest.

At fullback Arsene at least had all his options open.  With the now depleted fixture list I would expect to see Sagna and Clichy every time.  I won’t mind seeing Gibbs now and then but the combination of Eboue and Squillaci makes me nervous.  Eboue will inevitably get stranded way up the pitch somewhere and Squillaci doesn’t have the acceleration to cover for him.

With Diaby and Song out for this game at least, Wenger doesn’t have much choice but to put Denilson alongside Wilshere in front of the back four.  I’m not in the Denilson hating camp, but we are going to miss Song’s controlled tenacity and forward passing.

It looks like Van Persie is in the ‘fit’ column so he will start, but which three will support him and in what roles? With Fabregas and Walcott out it’s perm three out of Nasri, Arshavin, Bendtner, Chamakh, Rosicky and Ramsay.

I hope we will see Nasri and Arshavin.  I suspect we will see them either side of Van Persie.  I have written many times that I think Nasri ought to be in the middle when Fabregas isn’t available, but it never happens so I expect to see him out on the wing tomorrow.

I presume that Wenger’s fear is that we will get too narrow without him out wide, allowing the opposing back four to stay compact and stifle attacking runs into the box.  The only problem is, I don’t we get enough of those attacks from Rosicky.

Could he use Ramsay there instead, or is he back from loan just to provide cover?  If he doesn’t start against West Brom, who does he start against?   I would like to see him at 3pm but a expect it will be Rosicky.

So I’m guessing:

__________ Almunia ___________
Sagna _ Squillaci _ Koscielny _ Clichy
______ Denilson _ Wilshere ______
__________ Rosicky ___________
_ Nasri ___ Van Persie __ Arshavin _

But what do you think?

Whilst we wait for our fate in the Champion’s League draw later this morning, what do we make of this week’s keeper speculation?

Not so long ago, the situation must have seemed fairly straightforward.  There was a trio of promising keepers coming down the production line, no need to splash a huge amount of cash, just find a mature, competent journeyman to cover the gap between Lehman and Fabianski.   I really don’t think that Almunia was meant to be more than a stop-gap.  But football isn’t a science and players don’t always develop as planned.  What looks like a wealth of talent turns into a confusion of four first-team keepers but no obvious first choice.  Fabianski doesn’t develop at the hoped for speed.  What’s a manager to do?  Frustrating business, especially in the one role where you can’t give time on the pitch through playing out of position.

But we might slowly be seeing a solution.  Everything that you read about Almunia points to the exit.  I think that it’s just a question of whether there is a good deal for him somewhere this January or whether he has to wait for the summer.  I think that he will do a could job for someone, just not at the top end of the Premiership.

Mannone is safely parked out on loan at Hull where he has just kept his third clean sheet in four games.

So that leaves the two Poles – Fabianski and Szczesny.   A lot of speculation about this week that the the younger Pole, Szczesny, will get a second start against Stoke.  Some go further, suggesting that the nature of Fabianski’s injury is the same as Almunia’s – Wenger’s humane habit of not wanting to humiliate a dropped player.

Szczesny made a very decent league debut on Monday in a big game. He handled well and didn’t look like missing any cross that he tried to claim.  He wasn’t always exactly where his team-mates expected him to be for a pass-back and his kicking needs plenty of work, but it was a good confident display on the fundamentals and he topped our Man of the Match poll .

Is Wenger getting all decisive on the keeper question or is Fabianski a bit short of fully fit and he’s hedging his bets? Either way it looks like Szczesny gets a second go.  My guess is that Wenger hasn’t quite made his mind up yet, but at least the choice is getting clearer.

What do you think?

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So here we are a quarter of the way through the season.  Second in the Premiership, in complete control of our Champions League group, into the last eight of the Carling Cup and even some clean sheets!  Plus we have players returning from injury.

Not to bad a start, better than I feared in the depressing aftermath of the West Brom game.  We had a real wobble there and if our main rivals had taken advantage things wouldn’t look so rosy.  But we got away with it and we are where we are.  So what have we learned along the way?

1.  We still need to sort the goalkeeper issue, but the door certainly isn’t closed against Fabianski.

Although the last few games have been error free we shouldn’t get carried away.  The goalkeeping situation has been a weakness since the departure of Jens Lehman.  Nothing can done until the transfer window.  We have probably seen the best we will ever see from Almunia.  Give Fabianski a chance to show what he can do in a consistent run in the team.

2. Jack Wilshere has arrived.

He isn’t quite the finished article yet, but at his age that’s fair enough.  He needs better judgement sometimes in his tackling.  But he has arrived as a regular first team player with a massive future.  His talent is that he is comfortable both as a second defensive midfielder when we don’t have possession and an attacking midfielder when we do.  In a few games he has defined Diaby and Denilson as rotation players.  Someone commenting on an earlier post described him as a “Fabregas/Flamini hybrid” and that kind of covers it.

3. Samir Nasri is a great player.

For me, he’s the player of the season so far.  He’s fast, hard-working, a great passer and a cool finisher.  He’s the sort of player we’ve been missing since Robert Pires or Freddie Ljungberg before he got slow.  He can play in the middle covering for Cesc or on either flank.  Brilliant.

4. Chamakh, Squillaci and Koscielny were three good summer signings.

Marouane Chamakh came on a free – what a fantastic bit of business.  Strong running towards goal for a through pass, or back to pick up possession deep.  Quick feet and a threat in the air.  How does he fit in the squad with a fit and on-form Bendtner?  Don’t know, but a good problem to have!

Sebastien Squillaci – also money well spent.  Not spectacular but solid and fairly unflappable.  Laurent Koscielny – solid too, but faster and probably the better of the two.  Taking the two together, we now have a more solid defence that is surviving the lengthy injury to Vermaelen.  There are definitely better central defenders out there, I’m not saying these two are the last word, but they were both good buys that have already proved their value.  With Chamakh they make us look more dangerous in corners as well.

5. We still have the capacity to blow points against weaker teams.

The West Brom game was too typical of the sort of match that has ruined recent seasons.  Typically it was against a team we were tipped to beat, just after a strong win.  Sometimes Arsenal players seem to get it into their heads that  the last game makes them infallible and they substitute complacency for confidence.  Then, when a ‘weaker’ team refuses to roll over and die, they don’t seem to be able to shift up a gear and respond.

All in all… a good start and plenty of potential in the fixtures ahead in November to keep the momentum going.  Come on Arsenal.